RI-SEN: First Battle Of Whitehouse-Chafee Showdown: Big Labor To Pick Candidate Tonight
The first major battle of the general election showdown looms tonight, as the AFL-CIO gathers for its big state convention to decide whether to endorse GOP Senator Lincoln Chafee or Dem challenger Sheldon Whitehouse. On one side there's Chafee, who argues that Big Labor benefits by having a pro-labor Senator in the Republican Caucus. On the other is Whitehouse, who claims that the GOP's grip on of Congress has to be broken if the labor movement is to survive. Providence Journal columnist Charles Bakst games it out after the jump.
Bakst handicaps the vote and concludes Whitehouse is the favorite:
Delegates almost always back Democrats; it's a big thing if a Republican can keep a Democrat from getting the two-thirds vote needed for an endorsement. AFL-CIO President Frank Montanaro is Democratic national committeeman but he has spoken highly of Chafee in the past. "I still do," he said yesterday.
While Chafee is going for the endorsement, it would still constitute a major victory for him if he kept Whitehouse from reaching two thirds, thus giving no endorsement at all.
Chafee is casting himself as being "pro labor"?!? And labor is supposed to believe that.. since when has Chafee been anything other than anti-labor.. ? As the mayor of Warwick, he was huge on privatization, as I recall his attempt to privatize the sanitation department cost the taxpayers of the city even more, then he was more or less forced to rehire the union workers.. if that is a strong record on labor issues than he must think that we're easily snowed.
Since he was appointed to his father's senate seat he has voted with his party against worker's rights issues. As an aside, Charlie Bakst is no friend of labor or the worker.. it was the usual snowjob in aid of his fellow republicans that Bakst is famous for..
September 14, 2006 11:46 PM | Reply | Permalink